


A Team in Developement

by Kakushigo



Series: Leverage Bingo [3]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Anti-Leverage is coming together, Damien still gets what he wants, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 16:37:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15644700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kakushigo/pseuds/Kakushigo
Summary: Sterling picks up the world's second best hacker and is more then ready to bet Chaos can go from second string to starter with a little push.





	A Team in Developement

**Author's Note:**

> This is the third of my Leverage Bingo prompts, "Chaos." Takes place after the "Ho Ho Ho Job."

Colin also known as "Chaos" was Sterling's in to a former anti-Leverage team and Sterling's pick for the hacker to oppose Hardison. The man had been trying to kill Marcus Starke and wouldn't mind the dubious ethics involved in Sterling's employer's particular venture, especially considering one of his own recent jobs had involved Santas of all things. Sterling's employeer produced Chaos for him after a short time, marginally unharmed (unharmed enough for Sterling to work with at least and he really wished he knew who his boss was, so he could give him a piece of his mind. You don't just threaten potential resources like that. One lured more to your side with carrots then with sticks. And you could always poison someone who kept expecting carrots from you much easier.). From Chaos, Sterling was able to extract data, much better data then what he had before. Chaos himself was a decent hacker, not Hardison level, but with a little practice Sterling thought he might be able to hone him. It helped that he had a chip in his shoulder against Hardison and the team, he wouldn't mind if his enemy permanently disappeared. After all, it was twice now that Hardison had beaten him and the other man's pride was starting to take a beating. The perfect thing to play against Chaos, in Sterling's opinion.

Chaos has a brain between his ears, it was just often and easily distracted. Honing that into a anti-Hardison bomb was going to be difficult, but Sterling knew some people who had information on their drives that the didn't want getting out- Sterling had Chaos practice on them. And then had him keep practicing. After the first one, Sterling knew that Chaos required a very refined diet (as in specific, not as in particularly pleasant or high brow- it was basically grape soda and microwaved noodles, but he could run off of it for days and he seemed to work better on it). He also knew Chaos had gotten good enough to rely on some handicaps. The next time, Sterling removed those handicaps and watched Chaos glare at him before digging in. He nearly got caught that time, but he'd remembered what it was like to hack without any of his safety nets and that's what Sterling wanted. He was honestly a better hacker that way after all, he hadn't updated his safety nets since he wrote them when he first got into hacking. There were some weaknesses that even Sterling, who was not a computer genius like Hardison, could see. And while some of them were probably false starts to trap the newbies, some of them probably weren't. The third of Chaos's trials was to hone his speed. It still took him longer then Sterling would like, but decent enough he supposed. Sterling wanted the best for a chance at catching Leverage off guard, Chaos was the only one who could be Hardison's level.  It might take a little encouragement, but Sterling knew talent when he saw it.  

And of course, the much bigger challenge would come later- socialization Chaos into a group. Much like Sterling himself, Chaos was a one man team. He didn't trust other people because other people weren't as good as him and would just slow him down. But if they were going to beat Leverage, Sterling would have to ease Chaos out of that mindset. Chaos's domain was going to be computers, the rest of the job would be outsourced to people who specialized in that sort of thing. Sterling certainly didn't want to be the one crossing fists with Eliot. Right now, Sterling was operating as the Mastermind, but he was hoping he could find someone else to fill that roll too, leaving him the Mastermind of the Mastermind- mostly because if this went wrong, Sterling didn't want to be the man Nathan Ford decided to destroy next.  


End file.
